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The Public Editor

What if the Secrets Stayed Secret?

I READ the Monday New York Times with what can only be described as a sinking feeling.

Here on display, based on yet another WikiLeaks release, was the breathtaking disclosure of American diplomats’ highly sensitive internal communications about friends and enemies. The discreet world of confidential embassy cables had seemingly been blown apart.

The Times articles, beginning then and continuing even as I write, lasered in on United States diplomats’ reporting about the most explosive situations in the world: Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons, an out-of-control and increasingly weaponized North Korea, deep instability and unreliability in Pakistan. And much more, most of it unsettling, some of it gossipy (Sarkozy is a spoiled Frenchman?) and some of it lurid enough to belong on the E! channel (cue the Chechen-strongman-gone-wild in Dagestan).

Even as The Times has unveiled these stories through the week, snapping into focus one disturbing crisis after another, it has been impossible to ignore the hand of Julian Assange, the curator of purloined secrets and founder of WikiLeaks. For this go-round, Mr. Assange had adroitly orchestrated a media rollout headed by The Guardian of Britain and joined by a handful of European news organizations, with The Times picking up the material from The Guardian.

The image of Mr. Assange as ringmaster is deeply disturbing, especially since he seems to so relish his worldwide notoriety. The image of great news organizations as performers in the ring, though, is even more alarming to me.

These are what some would view as the journalistic “problems” of this latest chapter in the WikiLeaks story: The exposed secret cables seem to threaten what little stability there is in the world. Extreme damage control by the United States is now urgently needed across a broad diplomatic front. And, to cap it off, many view the episode as an exercise in master manipulation of the news media by someone whose aims are obscure.

As unsettling as these issues are, it is appropriate to take a deep breath and consider the alternative. What if, instead of publishing what it knew, The Times had chosen to pass on WikiLeaks’s 250,000-plus secret documents?

What if The Times had mulled it all over and determined that the release of such sensitive information would endanger the government’s efforts to advance American interests in the world, and so concluded reluctantly that the newspaper would have to suppress the story?

Journalistic “problems” notwithstanding, it’s simply inconceivable that The Times would choose this path. The Times, like other serious news organizations in democracies, exists to ferret out and publish information — most especially information that government, business and other power centers prefer to conceal. Arming readers with knowledge is what it’s about, and journalists are motivated to pursue that end.

The impulse to obtain and publish inaccessible information is greatly strengthened in an age in which, if anything, government secrecy is growing. As The Washington Post reported earlier this year in its illuminating series “Top Secret America,” the government has expanded secrecy so much that 854,000 people now hold top-secret security clearances.

For editors, the opportunity to arm readers with hard-to-get information takes on great urgency. Once an editor assesses the merits of a subject like this one, the reporting goes forward and the story is published, albeit sometimes with redactions to avoid putting individuals in peril. The process, and the logic, are evident in the answer that Bill Keller, executive editor of The Times, gave me when I asked whether he had misgivings about publishing this material.

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Credit...Earl Wilson/The New York Times

“No question this exercise has had its challenges,” he said. “But from the time we got a good look at the material, there was no doubt that we wanted to publish. Of course, we considered potential legal risks and anticipated criticism, whatever we decided to do. The business of sorting and selecting from such a vast archive was daunting. We spent a great deal of effort on the labor of redacting potentially damaging material. Coordinating a publication schedule with other news organizations was complicated. But none of that ever overcame the excitement of a great story.”

So were the secret cables in fact newsworthy? Some have said they broke little ground, but I would assess it differently.

The authority of American diplomats’ analyses, often quoted verbatim from the cables, strengthened my understanding of the challenges the United States faces abroad. Perhaps for elite foreign policy experts, the material was less revealing. But I don’t think that’s the point. The real question should be: Are Times readers and Americans at large better informed on these issues because of the stories?

The answer is unquestionably yes. To cite just a few specifics:

North Korea: The Chinese don’t know what’s going on with Kim Jong-il’s nuclear program, a surprising revelation for anyone who thought the Chinese could, as a last resort, put a lid on little brother.

Pakistan: American diplomats seriously doubt that Pakistan’s military, which effectively controls the state, will ever suppress extremist groups that conduct operations against our forces in Afghanistan and threaten India. That knowledge implies continuing futility for further American efforts to combat such groups in Afghanistan.

Iran: United States officials believe that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s government obtained so-called BM-25 missiles from North Korea, enabling Iran to extend its range enough to strike Western Europe or Moscow. This development largely explains the Obama administration’s willingness to shift its missile defense strategy in Europe.

But wait, other news organizations have now weighed in to say The Times’s coverage of the BM-25 missiles was misleading, that other authorities have cast strong doubt on whether such missiles even exist. That leads me to the further point: Publication isn’t necessarily a short hop to the full truth. It is sometimes only a first step. But it is the essential first step in a process that has to start before the marketplace of news and information can establish the facts.

No question, the journalistic “problems” of this latest WikiLeaks episode put a lot of pressure on the news organizations that got the material. The Times was perhaps blessed this time that it didn’t have to deal directly with Mr. Assange. But the path ahead was clear to Times journalists, justifiably, from the moment they saw the documents.

Consider:

What if The New York Times in 1964 had possessed a document showing that L.B.J.’s intent to strike against North Vietnam after the Gulf of Tonkin incident was based on false information? Should it have published the material?

What if The Times had possessed documentary evidence showing that the Bush administration’s claims about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction were unfounded? Should it have published the material?

These questions, which need only be posed rhetorically, supply an answer to the larger question: Would you as a reader rather have the information yourself or trust someone else to hang on to it for you?

E-mail: public@nytimes.com

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section WK, Page 8 of the New York edition with the headline: What if the Secrets Stayed Secret?. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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